What Do Hair Colors Mean In Anime
Producer'south notation: Someone on Quora asked: Why do Japanese take blue eyes and blond hair in anime? Here is 1 of the best answers that's been pulled from the thread.
Keep in mind that anime follows a complex visual language, where seemingly innocuous elements bear deeper pregnant. And hair color is amongst the first and foremost, especially when dealing with female characters.
Significant, in most cases, the colour of an anime character's hair does not reverberate some natural hair colour or a racial stereotype – instead, it is supposed to be a hint towards their personality and their role in the plot.
I gauge it's high time for a crash course in anime hair color symbolism…have a seat.
Yellow pilus:
The nearly widespread meaning is simply "someone special". This holds especially true for shoujo (for girls) manga/anime titles, where you lot can pretty safely bet that the most important female atomic number 82 will be blonde. Occasionally, it can as well signify "the rude/inconsiderate foreigner", for instance a non-Japanese graphic symbol with an annoying or rude personality – but that's more than of an exception than the rule.
Blue hair:
…typically signifies a quiet, soft-spoken, intellectual, sometimes even introverted character – albeit oft i with a surprisingly strong will. In addition, such characters tend to get portrayed as refined, tradition-oriented and feminine, quite often even as examples of the Yamato Nadeshiko ideal.
Carmine hair:
…strongly suggests a tomboyish, inconsiderate, loud, often headstrong, "leader" classic. This character volition frequently charge ahead and/or speak her mind without holding back. In the extreme example, this behavior will go all the way to the point of acting rash or even stupid. Besides tend to have voracious appetites.
Annotation: ambitious shades of orange pretty much fall into the same category.
(Vivid) Dark-green pilus:
Mostly extinct these days – only bright green hair is most often the sign of the "genki girl", another comedy-oriented character archetype. Such a character is chipper, upbeat, active, sports-minded and energetic. However, different a redhead, this character is more feminine and less prone to blindly rushing ahead – and unremarkably displays normal or above-average levels of intelligence.
Note: darker shades of green typically conduct like connotations as "blue".
Regal pilus:
Too near-extinct – at least when it comes to intense shades of purple. What isstill somewhat common, withal, is characters with lighter/paler shades of purple. These almost always come up with long, flowing hair and typically signify some sort of discrete, noble, cultured, dainty, often even mysterious, "fantasy princess" archetype.
Pinkish hair:
Ah yes, pink. The 1 color that has undergone the strongest shift since the beginning of my anime career. Originally, this colour was rare, and reserved for a select few childlike characters. But and then… the moe phenomenon happened. And made this color the industry standard for dozens of "cutesy-moe-female-leads". Today pinkish hair is pretty much everywhere… even so some of the attributes have carried over. Even today, pink characters still tend to exist not very brilliant, somewhat innocent, naive – and often idealistic to the point of being empty-headed.
Brown pilus:
Brown stands for "warm + friendly normal" and is the most common "twenty-four hours-to-day-life side character" haircolor. Similar to black, the underlying message is not very strong – nevertheless, brown is most popular for longtime babyhood friends, or all sorts of "safe/reliable" love-interests. Characters with this pilus color tend to play some role in the plot, and be close friends of the leads, simply they nonetheless correspond normality and following social expectations… sometimes to the point of being tiresome.
Black hair:
Being the near widespread Japanese hair colour, this does not about carry a significant as strongly predefined equally most others – in fact, it can just mean "the everybody". Yet, in cases when the character has long, flowing blackness pilus, it can be intended as a shorthand for "noble lady / Japanese princess / idol of the whole school" characters. In that respect, it sometimes once again overlaps with the Yamato Nadeshiko notion.
Surprised that you didn't detect "white" in the list, withal? Well, that is because luminance/brightness is typically on an orthogonal scale to the various colors above…
Simply put, the brightness of a grapheme'southward hair communicates how downwardly-to-earth and otherworldly a character is. The darker a color, the more that character lives in the here and now – and the brighter, the more esoteric, afar, magical and surreal he/she is…
With the extreme version of that trope, signifying "utter otherworldliness", being evidently white.
Disclaimer: The archetypes listed hither describe the stereotypical expectationsthat characters of a certain hair color will incite in an experienced audience of anime viewers. Only judge what, sometimes the industry dares to *gasp* subvert expectations. In other words, these are strong, recurring patterns – but not hard-and-fast, immutable rules.
TL;DR:
Pilus colour in anime carries an intended meaning – and that meaning will typically hands override any sort of "normal" coloring that you would await in terms of "realism". Every bit such, in most cases, it is futile to try to interpret any anime pilus color as being a representative of some real-world race/hair color. 
This answer originally appeared at Quora: The best reply to any question. Ask a question, get a great respond. Learn from experts and get insider noesis.
Source: https://thoughtcatalog.com/martin-schneider/2015/02/anime-hair-colors-do-they-carry-any-significant-meaning-in-japanese-culture/#:~:text=Meaning%2C%20in%20most%20cases%2C%20the,their%20role%20in%20the%20plot.
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